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Liquid Playboys

by Liquid Playboys

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1.
Feeling 04:24
2.
Bread 05:46
3.
1Q84 02:32
4.
5.
Shell 03:57
6.
Cruisin' 03:52
7.
Break 02:51
8.
500 Years 04:04
9.
Tomorrow 03:58

about

Liquid Playboys is the culmination of several years of learning to make music on the computer. It features work written starting in 2018 in Brooklyn. Though most of it was made in 2021 Berlin. It's the first full length record I've put out since the last thing my old band, Neighbors, put out in 2016 (Very Rare Expensive Jewelry). It's also my first electronic record, my first instrumental record, my first record mixed completely in Live. A lot of firsts!

~~~

There was a time when I couldn’t imagine expressing myself without my guitar and voice. The dissolution of my band and subsequent move to New York forced me to reconsider some of the assumptions I had made about what I would, or could create. How do I make music on my own? I wasn’t ready to try and start a band again, to spend nights in bars (sober) becoming fully enmeshed in the scene. I hung mainly with my closest friends.

After making coffee for a few months, I landed a gig as the house engineer at a small commercial studio in TriBeCa. I thought I had made it! In reality, changes in the industry were catching up to us. I had a lot of free time in an empty studio, so I focused on composition, spending a year making and mixing down a song every day.

I was 31 and I realized that I wasn't anywhere close to where I wanted to be, career wise. So I quit engineering and went back to school, where I ended up learning signal processing and audio programming. I made almost zero music. My wife (then girlfriend) and I were living in a TINY place in Park Slope, so I didn’t have space or time. I did make one thing that lasted, which is on this record (Feels Like I’m Always Falling). Though I wasn’t concentrating on making music, I learned a lot in those two years about computer music, composition, and how to listen.

At that point, I wasn’t sure when or if I was going to make a record again. I was working full time on audio plugins and feeling really good about the work. 



The pandemic made us realise our need for a larger place, and with it came (for me) a dedicated office and studio room. I was finally able to set up all the gear that had stayed in boxes for the last two years. I started trying to make things, inviting John, one of my best friends and an original member of Neighbors, over to smoke cigarettes and muck around in Live like we had when I was working at the commercial studio. There we made what became Cruisin’.

This was all short lived. I got a dream job in Berlin, and our lives became all about getting ready for that: getting married, selling things, getting our papers in order. The rest of this record began in our temporary flat in Moabit.

I had learned more about drum layering, becoming more comfortable with using samples and composing in the timeline. This might be because I didn't have a place to put my controller. It was easier to just sit at the dining room table with my laptop. Once I let go of the notion that everything had to be played by myself, things I wanted to listen to again started to appear. I would upload them to Soundcloud and walk around my strange new environment. I remember walking through Europa City as it was getting dark, listening to early versions of Tomorrow, 1Q84, and some other tunes that didn’t make it on this record. That’s a time I’m already a bit nostalgic for. You only get to be brand new in a country once! And only for a few months.

I don’t really remember when the others happened. I know Feeling came out of learning about 16-velocity mode on the Push and using it to program in the step sequencer (who knew dynamics would be so important). Bread was written after taking my first bike ride in Berlin. I rode down to Tempelhofer and rode back blasting Boards of Canada in my earbuds. Which isn’t related to the song per se, but it’s what happened.



I remember walking through Tiergarten past the Bellevue S-Bahn listening to an early version of Shell, trying to get the kick right (I’m not sure if I got it right still) and being unreasonably proud of the outtro, and the way I had cut Dom’s guitar and bass to turn what was a glorified 8 bar loop into a Real Song. Though at lot of that was already accomplished by Dom’s playing.

500 Years and Break were both made at the permanent flat. I got a notion to start doing things with vocal samples, so I asked Alex (Dominic Sen) for some stems. I made a creepy pad that, with a Splice piano loop, became the basis of 500 years. I took the spoken intro to one of her tunes and made it the centre of what would become Break.



~~~~



I want to thank Dominic Angelella for hearing SO MANY early songs and giving advice, and for playing and writing on Shell. I want to thank Dominic Sen for sending me vocals. I also want to thank Irdial Discs for granting me permission to sample from The Conet Project.

I want to thank Sarah, for giving me a lot of space and always being in my corner.



~~~

The record is dedicated to Mark and Scott Macreading. They left before I really got a chance to know them. They were artists and lovers of music, and they deserved more time. The past year and change have been shaped by losing them, so much so that it can be hard to process or recognise. Light bends around it.

It’s inevitable that they have influenced this music. I hope the tunes live up to it.

credits

released March 4, 2022

Recorded 2018-2022 in Brooklyn and Berlin

JDR: Recording, Mix, Master
Dominic Angelella: Guitar, Bass (Shell)
John Enebrad: Synths, (Cruisin')
Sarah Macreading: Album Art

Special Thanks: Dominic Sen, Irdial Discs

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Liquid Playboys Berlin, Germany

A reformed American Indie Rock musician living in Berlin.

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